Seafaring Labour: The Merchant Marine of Atlantic Canada, 1820-1914

A compassionate look at the effect of industrialization on the individual lives of sailors, Sager argues that sailors were not misfits or outcasts but were divorced from society only by virtue of their occupation. The wooden ships were small communities at sea, fragments of normal society where workers lived, struggled, and often died. With the coming of the age of steam, the sailor became part of a new division of labour and a new social hierarchy at sea. Sager shows that the sailor was as integral to the transition to industrial capitalism as any land worker. --Publisher's description

Book available at Internet Archive to people with print disabilities: https://archive.org/details/seafaringlabourm0000sage/page/n5/mode/2up